The invention claimed herein relates to the field of harvesting equipment. More particularly, the invention relates to a device for removing plant material from a vine so that the vine can be discarded and only the desirable plant material retained for processing. The invention is particularly useful in the harvest of hops cones (“hops”) from hop vines.
Hop vines are grown on a trellis. The young hop plant is trained to grow up a support twine secured in the ground at the lower end, and to a horizontal wire at the upper end. At harvest, the hops are removed from the vines and are processed to extract components used in making beer and other products. A variety of devices have been used to harvest hops. Some provide for picking of the hops in the field. The most commonly used devices in commercial hop harvesting provide for the removal and transport of the entire hop vine and support twine to a central processing facility. At the processing facility, the hop vines are suspended one by one on a series of hooks that carry the vines into a chamber. Each vine is “combed” or “raked” to strip off the leaves and cones, which fall to a screen or conveyor. A number of processes are known for separating the cones from the leaves, stems and other debris once they are removed from the vine.
While the process described above is effective in harvesting hops, it is not ideal. One shortcoming of this process is that the vines, support twine, leaves and stems must be transported from the field to the processing facility along with the hops. Once the hops are successfully separated, the rest of the plant and support twine are destroyed. It would be advantageous to leave the unusable parts of the plant in the field rather than to incur the additional labor and transportation costs to transport them to a processing facility.
Another shortcoming of known hop harvesting devices is that it is not uncommon for hops to be missed in the harvesting process, resulting in a lower crop yield than might be possible with a more thorough harvesting device.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a vine stripping apparatus useful in harvesting hops and other vine-grown agricultural products that is efficient and thorough in removal of the hops from the vine. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a vine stripping apparatus that is useful in the field, as well as at a central processing location. These objectives and others are met by the invention described in the following specification, and in the accompanying drawings.